Field
The presently disclosed embodiments and manufacturing processes relate to the prevention of tampering with a container of products to prevent substituting counterfeit products in the container, prevent theft and unauthorized access in general.
Description of the Related Technology
Shipping containers used for sea and land transport of goods are especially vulnerable to intrusion when left in a holding yard such as at a freight forwarder. Containers can be compromised when illegally removed from holding yards or high-jacked while in transit. An emerging issue noted especially by military shippers is a breach of a shipping container through its walls rather than through the container doors. Once a wall—breach occurs, the intruders can replace and repair the hole to make the container appear untouched. Detection of the breach becomes problematic for the shipper and the recipient of the goods until the time the contents are carefully examined. Often the time between a breach and examination can be lengthy, making it impossible to recover the lost goods and track down the intruders.
Globalization of product manufacturing has brought a significant challenge to consumers in that many products are substituted by counterfeits during and after manufacture, throughout portions of the supply chain and during transit. These counterfeit products do not perform as intended causing significant financial losses, jeopardizing national security and endangering the health of individuals. Counterfeiters attack the supply chain for electronic parts, costly mechanical parts, expensive perfumes and cosmetics, and medicines and more. Some of the worst examples include counterfeit medicines, which can be substituted with chemicals with life threatening consequences; bolts which go into critical locations such as bridges and aircraft; fire extinguishers containing compressed air which cannot perform in urgent situations; and electronic parts that are installed in national Defense systems which reduce reliability and performance, further causing life threatening situations.
Present solutions include the utilization of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. These tags are devices that are attached to the products or shipping container. They include an identification code and in some cases manufacturing information about the part. During shipment and at different locations of the supply chain, the RFID tags are scanned by equipment that applies radio frequencies to the tag and reads the identity of the part to determine if the tag will return the correct information. If this is the case, then the product is believed to be authentic.
Shipping and logistic services suppliers are able to check the part in transit at various locations to determine if the RFID tag returns the expected information.
However, the use of RFID tags has significant weaknesses. When used in a box or package containing products it only ensures the box or package that carries the authenticity tag to be good. The box or package contents can be counterfeit and could have been changed somewhere in the supply chain during transit, at a warehouse, or in the vehicle during transportation between supply chain locations.
If the RFID tag is used to tag individual items, a known approach is to remove the tag and place the tag on a counterfeit item, then selling the authentic part to another customer, resulting in increased profits to the counterfeiter. There are companies that sell “tamper-proof” tags, however, counterfeiters will use patient and meticulous chemical procedures to dissolve the adhesive on the tag in the same manner they use processes to re-label and polish semiconductor packages. Placement of a tag on each individual product has the added disadvantage of increasing cost. For example, if added to each bolt in a shipment it will add tens of cents to the cost of the bolt. It would be costly and impractical to add RFID tags to each integrated circuit, which are put in the customary shipping tubes. Further, the tag would interfere with the automatic insertion process machines used to build electronic assemblies. Furthermore, a tag cannot be added to many of the miniature electronic devices such as resistors, capacitors, and many increasingly smaller integrated circuit packages, which are much smaller than an RFID tag. For example, the dimensions of a 01005 resistor is only 0.4 mm by 0.2 mm; placing a tag on one of these devices is not physically nor economically feasible. Critical mechanical parts have had tags inserted in the part itself. This approach will also be subject for tag removal or hacking of the tag code, and will only be successful using the more complex tags with a read block. In this last case there will be a significant cost increase and the addition of the tag embedded in the part can affect its performance.
In addition to the limitations described above, RFID tags can be hacked where the part information can be read and placed in another fresh tag which can then be attached to counterfeit product. RFID tags vary in price from 10 cents to several dollars each. Some of them have a “read block” feature in place meant to prevent tampering, however, this feature requires a State Machine or a processor function to be placed in the tag, therefore only the more costly tags will have the feature. The read block tags will individually be placed in the more costly products, but they will still be subject to the issues previously described.
Attempts have been made to include tags made out of paper used to seal the package, plastic wrap, or molten metal devices embodying wires at both sides of container lids. However, these sealing methods only present a temporary challenge to counterfeits, who, with enough effort in a workshop and with minimal equipment can replace products with counterfeits in containers, reproduce the seals and reattach RFID tags. If tags are not write-read-write protected internally, they can be readily counterfeited.
There are approaches used by the prior art where a shipping container holding parts is irradiated with electromagnetic signals of varying frequencies and a signature is obtained, which is then compared to a similar measurement made at the receiving location. Alternatively a prior electromagnetic measurement characterization is made of a typical system and used as the standard for authenticity. Depending on the signature reflected by the materials in the container, an assessment is made about the authenticity of the parts. Electromagnetic radiation is subject to substantial reflections from the surrounding environment, the parts in the shipping container, and the physical position of the test equipment. These reflections will distort the measurement, and add noise to the reflected radiation, which will affect repeatability and reliability of the measurement. Results are often influenced by the skill level of the test operator and their ability to interpret the test equipment results.
There are other approaches that use a tool to radiate light into the package under test. This is used to detect counterfeit medicines. When the light is reflected, the tool is able to detect the presence of a few known chemicals, due to effects such as fluorescence characteristics. If these chemicals reflect light that corresponds to a different chemical to what is known to be contained in the medicine, the package is thought to be a counterfeit. Comparison and evaluation of the detected light is subjective in that the color on the display of the test tool is not a clear-cut choice and is subject to interpretation errors.
The market for medicines deserves special mention since the consequences of counterfeits are life threatening and potentially epidemic in scale. Over-the-counter medicines are placed in containers having a cap sealed with a plastic wrap that is tightly shrunk around the cap. This cap can be reproduced and containers with medicines can be replaced with counterfeits. Large shipments of medicines shipped in bulk to pharmacists can be shipped with RFID tags, but have the issues previously described above.
Reliance on the use of RFID tags only as a means to prevent counterfeit parts, means there must be extensive inspection of all components of any particular shipment, which increases the cost of counterfeit parts detection. This cost in turn is passed onto the end consumer.